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Social Media: Of Neural Networks and Kabbalah

By: streetwise (Diary)  |  February 20th, 2011 at 09:52 AM  | 

RESIZE: AAA

We have certainly seen a great deal of drama over the weekend concerning the community aspect of Red State, and the tendency of like-minded people to consistently recommend diaries by other like-minded people.  The drama has generated more heat than light, and the shouting matches over terms like “cabal” and “clique” no doubt delight the opponents of that overarching belief system shared by all members of the site.

We need to step back a bit and look at the very nature of social media.  Networking lies at the heart of it.  And social networks are like those Venn Diagrams you learn about in high school math – interlocking sets of data points (in this case members), except more complicated.  

They are everywhere, too.  Wall Street, ever addicted to coining buzzwords, has been pushing the concept of neural networks: how traders with a similar view of the market develop their own networks, promote that view, trade on it, and mutually reinforce market trends.  But then they move on, switching networks as they switch views.  It’s a very complicated phenomenon. (If you think RS discussions are tough, spend a day at Yahoo Finance on the discussion lists that exist for every popular stock!)

This phenomenon rules opinion sites.  People will flock together to promote commonly shared ideas.  All it takes for a neural network to form is a few people who email each other.  And then they email their contacts, and the contacts email theirs, and we’re off to the races.  Throw in technologies like Google or Yahoo Groups, Twitter, Facebook, etc. and you get a multiplier.  The RS front page does the same thing when it advises the members to do phone calls, emails, etc.  It is the most natural thing in the world.  
 
However bothersome this fact of life may be, network behavior CAN NOT BE STOPPED. That is why social media entrepreneurs become billionaires, and AOL (over)pays the likes of Arianna.
 
This is also why the arguments over recco’s, like the one that broke out on the infamous LIO energy diary, will always be a waste of time at best, and at worst can disfigure a site more than any offending diary that a lot of people like for whatever mysterious reason. (I did NOT like the LIO diary BTW.) 

In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Bennet observes that we exist to make sport of our neighbors, and to be laughed at in our turn.  Quite a good observation, I think.  As long as people are restrained enough to STAY neighbors.  So I will close with that.

But what of the mysteries of the Kabbalah, you say?  Sorry, I’m not going to tell you.  You have to join my Kabbalah group for that.

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COMMENTS

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  • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

    $10 to my Paypal account please. Thank you.

    • streetwise

      Plus an invite to my next Kabbalah session with Madonna.

      • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

        we’re even. Kabbalah. mmmmmm.

        That is a Joooooooooooish/Polish sausage, right?

    • speciallist

      get er done!

      • pilgrim
        • Raven

          “I Want a New Cabal”

          or something like that…

        • kowalski

          The entire value of Facebook is the data it collects about everyone on it about all of the mundane details of their lives. It’s the polar opposite of a blog, where everyone is a little reticent to share their details and seek anonymity. On Facebook, you get a few friends together and not only do people share their personal details, they share them in super-fine grained, geographically specific, totally identifiable detail.

          Needless to say, the data-mining opportunities there are the best in the world. Want to know what people are eating for dinner in Northern New Jersey? Just sample 10,000 Facebook accounts, you’ll find out not only what people are eating, but whether they’re going there with their spouse, their sister, their old friends from high school, or their mistress.

          On Facebook, people talk about almost every single decision they make in life, from leaving their spouses to what their kids are having for dinner to whether they’ve wiped themselves in the past three hours. It’s boring fare to anyone reading it but it is COMPLELTELY specific to the individual and UNSOLICITED and in their own words. In other words, it’s the realest of the realtime data you can get on human beings in this society – because it is provided by THEM.

          It’s the greatest advertising data gold mine ever discovered.

          When you log into Facebook, you’re feeding the Cube.

          • kowalski

            Because I’m in the direct mail business, customers often come to me and ask questions like:

            “Can I mail to all the people in the five surrounding towns who have median incomes above $50,000 a year and who are college graduates with children?”

            And I say: “Yes, that list will cost $125 per thousand people.”

            Facebook not only collects that data, for FREE, it collects it and it also knows which one of those children are SICK tonight and staying home from school tomorrow because their mommy is worried they have a fever.

          • kowalski

            I was shocked the other day when I forgot to log out of Facebook and also brought up the Washington Post’s website and not only were many of the people I know on Facebook right there on the Washington Post’s home page, they were there with all the new stuff they had just posted on Facebook.

            And these are not anonymous comments. I’m logged into the WaPo with an obfuscated username and they know exactly who I am and who all of my friends on Facebook are – they serve the page to ME.

            Barack hearts Zuckerberg because he absoultely wants to bypass the filter and go directly to the people in this society without any media intervening whatsoever, and Facebook and Google are helping him do exactly that.

            There has never been a time in our history when what people say and write and think about the most mundane to the most profound details of their lives are so completely available to the people who know how to get the data. Nothing you write on Facebook escapes the Washington Post if you’re logged into both. Don’t think it does. Ditto any other website that shares Facebook data the way the WaPo does.

            I’m sitting there looking at E.J. Dionne and there’s Josh Trevino on the same screen, in a Washington Post window.

            The more you share through Facebook, the more you talk about yourself, the more intricate that data about you becomes, and it will never ever be deleted.

          • streetwise

            Larger companies can leverage their existing base of promotional material, reformat it, and put it out there.

            Smaller companies don’t have the base to begin with, or the overhead to reuse it in social media apps.

          • kowalski

            And what happens in my experience with smaller enterprises is that they have to have someone who is a volunteer to keep the Facebook/Twitter/Etc. channel up to date and important.

            That person isn’t getting paid for that time and they’re not paying their mortgage, their car insurance, their health insurance costs, or their taxes. The smaller the organization is, the fewer competent people there are to manage that to go around. It really requires a lot of work and specific knowledge to represent an organization well on Facebook, and at this point the people I know who are doing it use unpaid volunteers who are willing to donate their time. They’re creating the product, they’re putting the data out there on Facebook, and the hope is that they’ll recoup something from it.

            But volunteering doesn’t pay bills. A large organization can set aside the salaries of two or three people to keep their Facebook presence updated and keep it vibrant, but the smaller the organization, the less able they are to keep that going.

            Reminds me of an old line from Kurt Vonnegut (of all people, paraphrased): “Everyone likes to make something new, but nobody likes to do maintenance.”

            And social media is ALL about maintenance.

            I’ve often thought about what Facebook’s value would be if the society charged back to them the “wasted time” cost. My guess is that it’s humongous time-wealth suck. Even people who don’t have anything better to do than post on Facebook would be better off spending their time trying to sell AmWay.

          • kowalski

            I tend to believe (with some background in the field to use as a crutch) that a lot of the most active people on Facebook are, in fact, narcissists. Probably not pathological narcissists but more narcissistic than ordinary by a standard deviation or so.

            They don’t consider the time they spend talking about themselves to be excessive, so they post more. I’m sure Zuckerberg’s guys have an algorithm that accounts for that when they do the data mining. :)

          • streetwise

            We were all wondering how that happened. You have made it absolutely clear. Thanks!

    • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

      on my website!

      www.devinelawvista.com

  • itrytobenice

    as another long term friend, I’d be happy to recommend your diary, but I’m going to need cash up front, as I understand you to be of the law profession (NTTAWWT IYKWIMAITYD).

    • streetwise

      It’s my lsst line of defense at the Last Judgment (prefaced by “at least”

      • itrytobenice

        of the world’s oldest profession, I guess I’ll hit the button with the promise of riches to come.

        Or at least a free upgrade to 1st class and a ‘bypass-the-TSA-gropers’ pass on my way to the RS gathering this fall!! (please, please, please, pretty please with sugar on it)

        • E Pluribus Unum

          It is a cabal of people trying to game the system and get certain people and certain works atop the diary list.

          You know how I know this? BECAUSE I KNOW FOR A FACT!!!!!!

          It is true, true, true, true, and NO amount of logic, no amount of sworn depositions from honorable men and women can dissuade me from what I know to be true. All of my friends and colleagues agree with me too, and clearly we are smarter than you (and those ‘cabal’ people).

          The evidence I bring is indisputable and overwhelming. To wit:

          • There are no people who write better diaries, who work harder at shaping and sharpening their argument, who present interesting and cogent work. There are no people who are more witty and engaging than others, none who do more to reach out and connect with new people (except for the Cabal of course – there are only favored and unfavored writers
          • Following like night follows day, when looking down the list of Recent Diaries, there is no useful information gained by looking at the names of the authors, because all the writing is the same.
          • There are no diaries that are better than any other diaries – only favored and unfavored ones.
          • There are no topics more interesting than others – only the author’s name matters.
          • There are no commenters who have developed relationships with other commenters — other than the Cabal of course.
          • This one is really important. If a handful of commenters communicate with each other, offline, and one of them emails to the others that hey, here’s two or three good diaries, posted this morning — well, this is evil and clearly at cross-purposes with promoting quality work at RedState.
          • It is perfectly obvious that Cabal people hold all the other 149,980 daily readers at RedState under some kind of evil spell that keeps them from recommending much of any work other than that approved by the Cabal. My evidence is that a large percentage, more than 50% in fact, of recommends given to approved Cabal writers are given by non-Cabal members.
          • The people who are protesting my claims WHICH I KNOW FOR A FACT TO BE TRUE and denying that there is an organized effort to be true – these people are lying. No matter what their contributions, (and several of them produce more and noticeably better work than an good number of my colleagues), no matter how they’ve given on-the-ground effort in actually working to elect people (again, many of them making a good bit more of a difference than my colleagues, regardless of earned reputations for honor, these people are still lying.

          All that, and plus your mother dresses you funny.

          • Raven

            Won’t be the last. At the very least, the Recco list needs a regularly cleaning. Remove everything from the Recco list and start it over 2 or 3 times a year and much of this problem will be dealt with.

          • Raven

            [/snark][/snark]

  • penguin2

    Objective technology wins over the suppositions. That said, I’ve been here a little over 2 yrs. My recos go to diarists because I like their writing and their ideas, AND let me point out something some people want to ignore: I like participation and support of others in the community. Paying attention to others is critical to becoming a member of a community.

    I read as many of the diaries at RS as possible, comment and reco to encourage. As people become established in the community they will have folks that look for them and enjoy reading their works, whether diaries or comments. We have some folks who only comment here at RS, and I always click on their comment to see what they’ve said. LisaDe in another post said this:

    I believe that the people who are always on the recco list are there for one reason only, They are good. Their names are known because they write very well and consistently and they are the ones that people look for.

    Cabal? No. Caring about others? Yes.

  • itrytobenice

    I don’t know how long I’ve been here (and my profile has forgotten as well) but I’m not a n00b. Over these many, many months, I’ve developed some friendships here. There are people here that I’ve interacted with often enough that I think of them as friends.

    When we started the RS gathering, I thought the idea was to deepen those friendships and strengthen our interactions. As time has passed, I don’t think there’s any question that it has done so. But there are people that I’ve never met, tweeted, friended, or emailed that fit that criteria as well.

    For example, I remember when Darin (Hello, ConservativeD!!) had his baby. Or when Nick Danger had his heart attack, or FrauBudgie ended up in ICU with her hubby giving us updates, or when c17wife’s hubby got sent overseas. And I’ve not seen JustMe in forever and a day. I’ve never had the opportunity to contact them outside RS, but I will if I get the chance, and meanwhile, if I ever see their name anywhere (in recent comments, diaries, where ever) I automatically click to see what’s going on.

    I feel like I KNOW them. So naturally, if one of them writes a diary or makes a comment, there’s a lot higher likelihood that it will elicit a response from me.

    Others are more recent acquaintances, but are people that I’m sure will hit that category. I love Vassar’s dry wit and his perspective from many more years than I’ve accumulated. I have enjoyed conservativecurmudgeon’s curmudgeonly postings, and orlibertygal is a fellow homeschooler, so I’ll be watching for her postings.

    There is nothing cynical about this behavior. I have very little time (unfortunately I’m borrowing time from getting ready right now and better get a move on) to spend on RS, and I intend to maximize that time by first clicking on things that interest me. Then, when time permits, I’ll hit something new or interesting (where I start in the recent posts page, looking for something that is generating some interest/comments – unless a diary gets over 100 comments, then I’ll assume it’s SARAH PALIN and stay the [redacted] away. That’s making me nutso.)

    Well, anyway. Tra la. Gotta go.

    p.s Email me if you want to take me up on my money-making venture discussed yesterday, in which case, tweet me please!! :-)

  • streetwise

    BTW, social media is the hot topic in many corporate offices these days. It is creating new jobs and new rules for those jobs. Fascinating

  • penguin2

    At least I hope not, and that is what has been so painful about this ongoing feud. Gosh, you would think we were the Hatfields and McCoys. :-)

  • http://vladenblog.tumblr.com Vladimir

    Flattery will get you nowhere, street…

    Oh, yeah! HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!!111!!!11!

  • http://teapartisan.wordpress.com Socrates

    are interesting because they have defined a new subculture. These rules are also developed internally by the subculture during its formation.

    In some ways electronic communication fora are a subset of our culture, but in other ways they are separate. The rules are different, but you know what they are based on the feedback you receive for violating them.

    It’s directly analogous to an inner-city ‘hood or a gated community. There are facts everyone understands, techniques for getting around, and rules.

    Culture is ‘what everyone knows everyone knows’. I say “Seinfeld” and you know. You say “reco” and I know — here. But say “reco” to the grocery store manager, or to me when I’m buying tomatoes, and I would stare blankly at you, at least until (somewhat embarrassed) I sheepishly remembered that we’re part of a shared subculture.

    And yes, when I notice penguin2 has recommended something, I am almost certain to read it, and most often do the same.

  • streetwise

    the longs and the shorts have colossal battles about the stocks they obsess over.

    The absolutely most memorable experience was a guy who went long Bear Stearns after its price had tanked mid $30′s but before the JPM rescue buyout at $2. He, literally, became suicidal. Fortunately, no, he didn’t.

    Then there’s Kos. ’nuff said!

  • Brian Hibbert

    the point of all this technology is. It helps people communicate more effectively (at least when it doesn’t CAUSE the misunderstandings). The bottom line in all these technologies is how well do people use them in their personal relationships. When we forget that, the technology is just an empty shell.

  • http://908StraightSt.wordpress.com/ mbecker908

    Nobody really likes you. You’re just tolerated because of your fantastic sig line. I know that for sure because I was connected with someone who communicated regularly with all the frontpagers and he told me so. I thought the information was first rate and I gave him one of his favorite crunch apple treats for passing along the info.

    And Gamecock, if you’re reading this, I want to retain you to get a restraining order to stop itry from ripping off MY recco business. It’s MINE!! MINE I tell you, MINE.

  • Raven

    Do I hide in the background That much?

  • http://www.nighttwister.com NightTwister

    that make this place seem like a bridge club.

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine

    in accordance with your wishes and will have the cabal try to be nice about getting the other party to consent..but my roosters will get the Hen to squeal!

  • itrytobenice

    First, Beck, if I hadn’t run out of time (and I knew I’d need to check the spelling of a word), I’d have mentioned you as the irascible (that’s the word) mbecker908 and the many-times-banned-and-still-stuck-in-loony-CA Tbone as two of my other friends who I /always/ click on when I see your name.

    Especially in comments, where I *know* you’ll be yanking on someone’s chain.

    Secondly, you’ll never get a consent decree out of me because I’ve got pics. Heh. So all your ideas are MINE!!

  • http://www.examiner.com/x-1597-Charlotte-Law--Politics-Examiner Mike gamecock DeVine
  • itrytobenice

    I’d never forget my recruiter buddy. Just ran out of time or else I’d have had to go to church with wet hair.

    How are things going with you?

  • kowalski

    It’s a cost that acrrues to the people who participate in it most: the need to keep the pipeline full of new media commentary.

    I work with some people who weigh the advantages and disadvantages of social media versus other media avenues for advertising and in my estimates so far, social media has the highest indirect cost.

    You get it started, it has to be constantly fed. New updates, new material, new announcements about what’s going on, constant streams about what is happening next – or people lose interest quickly.

    It’s an interesting way to connect with a large number of people at once but the cost of maintaining the connections is suprirsingly high, and it becomes more acute the smaller the organization is.

    In fact I’ve been seeing a negative return in social media in terms of revenue: people might befriend you or subscribe to your “channel” or follow your Tweets but very, very rarely do they follow through with real dollars to support your organization/cause. They read your stuff, which you provide to keep them reading, and they are easily bored. More importantly, they defer responsibility: “If this person has 12,000 friends, someone else will donate and I don’t have to.”

    Social media is mostly useful to the social media companies, which have vastly inflated market values once again based on a bubble of paper wealth. We’ve seen this before. It happened in the 1990s.

  • Raven

    I have actually not had much to add, so haven’t been posting much. Just passing on the news from here to everywhere else I participate.

  • kowalski

    The only person who has ever made a lot of money selling a blog is Arianna Huffington, and she’s the biggest “thief” I’ve ever seen. Social media isn’t that great an avenue for selling products. FIrst of all, anyone selling something with social media is immediately understood to be a corporate actor, which is anathema to the whole thing.

    Right now all of Facebook’s value is based on the future value of the 500 million+ users they have and the *data they collect on them* – not what those users actually click on. What Facebook is, honestly, is a gigantic data-collection operation and what their true value going forward is will be who they can sell that data to and for how much.